This invention relates to templates for hanging pictures or other decorations on a vertical display area such as a living room wall, a hallway wall, or a wall area in an office. More particularly, this invention relates to a template which is conformable to the size of the area of the wall to be covered with multiple hangings and carries the locations of the multiple hangings and hook locations onto that area. This invention also relates to a method for arranging two or more wall hangings on the template while the template is lying on a horizontal surface, thereafter transferring the locations of the resulting arrangement, with hook locations for the wall hangings marked on the template, to the vertical surface of the wall, briefly adhering the template to the display area while the hooks for the hangings are fastened through the template into the wall, and then removing the template just before the hangings are placed on the hooks.
A variety of devices, methods and systems have been brought forward at various times to facilitate hanging one or more pictures or decorative art works, curios, craft projects and similar types of room enhancements on the walls of rooms at home, in commercial establishments or in public buildings. The difficulties of hanging numerous items in a unified display area have also been described. The present invention provides a simple and expeditious way of solving the earlier problems and even makes the task quite enjoyable and much less tedious for one person to do by himself.
One such prior art system is shown and discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,612 which issued Dec. 31, 1991. That patent is specifically directed to the problems of locating a variety of rectangularly shaped and oddly shaped objects harmoniously with each other and with other features in the room such as windows, counters, furniture, light fixtures, etc. Textures such as papered or veneered walls are also considered. The difficulties most people have with making up their minds in this endeavor are recognized as well as the difficulty many inexperienced people have with accurately locating places for installing hangers such as hooks, screws and similar attachment devices.
The ""612 patent provides a suggestion for meeting these difficulties in the form of an easily releasable, adhesive backed, elongated sheet, long enough to be stored like a roll of wallpaper from which forms shaped like the rectangular and oddly shaped objects to be hung may be cut and then adhesively pressed against the wall in various arrangements. The sheet has holes so that the forms of the objects, i.e., the replicates, will also have holes when they are cut out of the sheet. The holes are surrounded by the releasable adhesive. Fasteners may be inserted through the holes when a suitable place for an individual replicate has been found on the wall among the rest of the shapes already there. Alternatively, if there is no convenient hole through the replicate to accept a fastener, a user is to determine where a fastener for the replicate must be driven into the wall so that the hangers for the object itself will be properly engaged.
Another suggestion for arranging multiple wall hangings on a wall occurs in U.S. Pat. No. 4,933,973, issued Aug. 10, 1999. In that patent a tool is suggested which carries two bubble levels and a rule for arranging the items to be hung directly on the wall in a strictly vertical or strictly horizontal sequence. Such sequences are independent of the wall and ceiling intersection and independent of the wall and sidewall intersection. The problem addressed by the ""973 patent is how to avoid misalignment of vertical and horizontal wall hangings which are oriented to nonvertical and nonhorizontal room intersections. The tool which is disclosed utilizes bubble levels which it carries to position the hangings absolutely upright and absolutely horizontal. The tool also utilizes a ruler which it carries to locate nail holes for each hanging in a geometrical or vertical and horizontal manner.
Other suggestions for arranging multiple items on a planar surface have been noted but are not regarded as addressing the same or similar problems as those addressed by the present invention. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,099,845, issued Nov. 23, 1937, a system of stencils and a stencil coordinating spider are proposed for mounting pictures on the pages of an album, and in U.S. Pat. No. 1,544,327, issued Jun. 30, 1925, a stencil is proposed for drawing a plurality of real estate lots on a plot or page. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,132,000, issued Jan. 2, 1979, rifle targets are generated utilizing a clear plastic sheet with graded apertures and locating apertures placed on a target sheet. As the clear plastic sheet is rotated and the locating apertures are turned and reregistered with initial markings on the target sheet, expanding target areas are formed and marked on the target sheet. And in U.S. Pat. No. 4,443,979, issued Apr. 24, 1984, a yard or so long plastic template is suggested for marking fastener positions on the back of a wall hanging and also on a wall at a desirable location. There the same indicia holes which were used to mark the locations for the fastener positions on the back of the wall hanging are used to mark complementary fastener locations on the wall itself.
The present invention approaches the problems of placing a group of wall hangings on a vertical display area of a wall in a very different manner, emphasizing the decorator""s visualization of the entire display area in the comfortable environment of a flat horizontal surface which is easily reachable and easily changed or reorganized and yet seen in full perspective. The design thus achieved is readily and exactly transferred to the wall using the template which the decorator created for the entire area.
The present invention is embodied in a template for transferring an arrangement of at least a pair of wall hangings having fastener means thereon from a horizontally disposed work surface to a vertically disposed display surface on a wall of a room. The template comprises a flexible sheet containing a field portion conformable to the vertically disposed surface, locator indicia on the field portion for recording the longitudinal and latitudinal positions of an outer configuration of each wall hanging, a location for each fastener means associated with each wall hanging, and a location for a hook to engage each fastener means. There is also an inscribable surface on the field portion for accepting a mark recording the location of each wall hanging, fastener means and hook location.
From the foregoing, and from what follows, it will be apparent that the present invention solves numerous problems which decorators and others have had arranging a plurality of wall hangings on a wall in a brief and simple-to-follow way.
It is one of the objects of this invention to provide a flexible sheet on which to outline two or more wall hangings in an arrangement for decorating a wall area.
It is another object of this invention to provide a flexible sheet on which an arrangement of two or more wall hangings may be placed horizontally and then moved to a vertical wall surface without any need for readjustment of the hangings in relation to one another.
It is another object of this invention to provide a flexible sheet on which to make an arrangement of wall hangings covering the size of the display area of a wall.
It is another object of this invention to provide an overlapping and integrateable set of flexible sheets on which to make a unified arrangement of wall hangings for a wall display area which is larger than the size of a single sheet in the set of sheets.
It is another object of this invention to provide a flexible sheet for an arrangement of wall hangings locating the final positions of the hooks for the suspension means of the wall hangings in the display area.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide a flexible sheet on which to make an arrangement of wall hangings which is moveable as a unit without changing the spatial relationship of the hangings in the arrangement to each other.